Watch Me Burn
I walk toward the pyre and halt when the priest holds out his arm, barring me from moving any further. He is a toothless man in little more than a diaper—rougher and less educated than me. But by virtue of his birth, his brown “not too dark” skin, and his gender, he is above me in all things.
I hate him. It's an ugly feeling rooted in my solar plexus. A burning. I contain it, keep it at a smolder. I keep my head down like a good wife. Perfect. Submissive. But I can feel a hint of a smile coming on. Or maybe it's a grimace that stretches my cracked, dry lips. I begin to bite at them, tearing off a longish strip of skin, reaching up with my red-tipped fingers to finish yanking it free. A whisper of blood seeps from the raw skin underneath. No one is looking at me, and the chanting continues.
The toothless priest is chanting. My husband is on the pyre.
His mortal remains, I should say. His life spark is gone. Inhabiting a new body. We will meet again…play roles of mother, daughter, captor, slave, student, babe…connected to each other through time and space until all meaning falls away and we melt into nothing. Or everything.
His mortal remains, I should say. His life spark is gone. Inhabiting a new body. We will meet again…play roles of mother, daughter, captor, slave, student, babe…connected to each other through time and space until all meaning falls away and we melt into nothing. Or everything.
I hated him, too. Hate him even now. He was never anything more than a coddled brat. Given everything—love from his parents, a dowry from mine. (Please, please take this useless female from our home. We will pay you well.) Respect, power, education. I got only pain and fear. Yelled at and pushed around with less consideration than he showed for our cow.
It is a cosmic joke that even now, in death, I am not free. I am yoked to this soul and will be for many ages to come, far as I am from attaining the kind of perfection that leads to freedom.
It is a cosmic joke that even now, in death, I am not free. I am yoked to this soul and will be for many ages to come, far as I am from attaining the kind of perfection that leads to freedom.
Crying is pointless. Caring, my children, my gold-embroidered silk and the heavy silver around my feet like shackles…all of it without meaning. The sun the moon and the stars, human existence, the universe and cosmic planes. So much shit streaming from the mangy dog’s anus on the side of the road.
The priest gives me a little shove. My final shove. Why can’t I see? I blink and blink. Tears and smoke. I climb the steps, splintery wood beneath my toes, and I stumble onto the pyre. Am I screaming? Is this what the gods want? My skin crackles and I am the flame. I am Sati, watch me burn.
